Lee Daniels

After the coffee. Before remembering to smile. Well, it's worth a shot! The Skinny: Are the Dodgers ever going to lose? Serves me right for turning the game off when the Mets were up 4-0 and watching "Scarface" on AMC. Thursday's headlines include a preview of Al Jazeera America, which launches next week, and a look at why "Lee Daniels' The Butler" has more producers than I have plates. Also, Daniel Loeb buys some Disney stock. Daily Dose: Fox Sports 1 will be available on Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and Dish Network when it launches Saturday.

For the second time this year, the brothers Weinstein are in a legal dispute with the brothers Warner. Harvey and Bob Weinstein and Miramax, the studio they founded and later sold, have sued Warner Bros., saying they are entitled to a share of the revenue from the second and third films in the "Hobbit" series, based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien. This comes after the two companies came to blows this year over the title of the historical drama that was eventually dubbed "Lee Daniels' The Butler.

One of the intriguing aspects of “Lee Daniels' The Butler” is that it straddles the line between father-son tale and race-relations epic. On the one hand, of course, it's about a man (Forest Whitaker's Cecil Gaines) who witnessed some of the great moments in civil rights history from his perch as a server in the White House. On the other hand, it's about what was happening in that man's own family, and the rift between his own ruffle-no-feathers approach and his activist son Louis, who dabbled in the world of the Black Panthers as well as less radical ideologies.

Maybe it's the ongoing success of "Lee Daniels' The Butler," or perhaps just the start of soulful autumnal nights, but something has put us in a jazzy, Louis Armstrong kind of mood. All of which is enough to make one wonder if "Something Wonderful," a long-gestating movie about Louis Armstrong from "Butler" star Forest Whitaker, still has a shot of getting off the ground. The man at the controls says it does. PHOTOS: Forest Whitaker: Career retrospective Whitaker tells The Times that he'd still like to direct and act in the independent production, and that he's been working to develop the script with the veteran screenwriter Ron Bass ("Rain Man," "The Joy Luck Club")

Moviegoers well-acquainted with Oscar-nominated director Lee Daniels' eyebrow-raising filmic oeuvre may be shocked to learn that his latest movie, “The Butler,” seems, at first blush, rather short on salacious surprises. This from the guy who had Nicole Kidman urinate on Zac Effron's face in last year's lurid drama “The Paperboy” and had Mo'Nique hurl a frying pan at Gabourey Sidibe's head (en route to claiming an Academy Award) in 2009's “Precious.” "The Butler" centers on Cecil Bates (Forrest Whitaker)

"Lee Daniels' The Butler" will be the No. 1 movie at the box office this weekend after taking in about $9 million in ticket sales last night. That puts the historical drama on track for a $27-million weekend, significantly more than The Weinstein Company's initial lowball estimate of $15 million. It also means "The Butler" will open to roughly the same weekend take as DreamWorks' 2011 civil rights drama "The Help," which also debuted in August and brought in $26 million on its way to a $169.7-million domestic gross.

"12 Years a Slave" and "Gravity" became the best picture front-runners after flooring audiences at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals, and little has changed in the ensuing weeks. Naturally, then, given their estimable craft, both movies are also leading the way in the director and cinematographer races. The key category to watch: original screenplay. If "Gravity's" outer-space tale of spiritual rebirth can land a nomination in that competitive group, it will signal the movie has the kind of broad appeal needed to carry it to a best picture win. Here's how the races for director, cinematography and original and adapted screenplay are shaping up on the eve of the L.A. unveiling of the season's final puzzle piece, Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street.

After the coffee. Before catching up with Affleck-as-Batman tweets. The Skinny: This weekend I'm headed to KCON, the K-pop convention here in Los Angeles, which should be quite an energetic scene. Today, I'll be bracing myself while listening to Neko Case's new album, streaming at NPR . Today's headlines include ESPN's exit from "Frontline's" documentary and our box office preview. Daily Dose: Discovery is calling for submissions. Discovery Channel U.S. and Discovery Networks International have launched a new $500,000 fund to invest in its next big programs from producers around the world.

In David Boies, the Weinstein Co. has a powerful weapon at its disposal in its legal fight with Warner Bros. over the title of race-themed pic “The Butler.” But on Tuesday it was touting a less well-known name: a Michigan teen named Katy Butler. Butler, as hard-core followers of goings-on in Weinsteinland will recall, was the young woman who in the spring of 2012 sponsored the Change.org petition in favor of lowering the rating for “Bully” from an R, citing bullying she's faced herself.

Sony Pictures decided to abandon "Lee Daniels' The Butler," placing its 2013 summer bets on "White House Down" and "After Earth. " Think the studio wishes it now had made a different decision? "The Butler," whose financing was cobbled together by numerous investors and is distributed by the Weinstein Co., is continuing to dominate the box office and is certain to finish in first place in its second week of release, according to early numbers released Saturday. PHOTOS: Hollywood Backlot moments The fact-based account of a black White House butler who served in eight presidential administrations is projected to gross as much as $16 million this weekend, easily surpassing the holdover "We're the Millers" and the new releases "The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones," "The World's End" and "You're Next," none of which are performing strongly.